Snip
by resoundingdeluge
Summary: Two workers become trapped at the bottom of a dust mine after a cave-in. With no way out and no other options, they each begin to develop very different ideas about what to do with their remaining time alive.


A scraping noise echoed throughout the cave.

He awoke once again, but didn't open his eyes immediately. He knew exactly what he would see, and some small, childish part of his brain still clung desperately to the hope that if he didn't see her, she wouldn't exist. That if he didn't look up and see the pile of rock suspended and wedged at the top of the shaft, the cave-in wouldn't exist. That if he didn't acknowledge the source of the long, drawn-out, maddening sound that seemed ever-present in his waking hours, it could be something, _anything_ else. Eventually, though, he knew that he would be found out, and punished for his deception. Eventually, she would come crawling over in that odd, nightmarish, inhuman way that she tended to move about the cave, and pull back his eyelids to find him awake. Eventually, this would all come to an end, one way or another, and it was only a matter of how much more painful the journey would be.

Slowly, subtly, the man opened his eyes, though he kept them downcast and drawn into tight slits to attempt to keep his consciousness hidden from his tormentor. He could see the stains of vomit and blood upon his shirt; sickly splotches of a deep, sticky, fresh red that shone as they caught the slight light filtering through the collapsed rocks above, and streaks of green, brown, and a viscous fluid tinted a revolting yellow. The fluids mixed and mingled with the grey fibers of his overlarge, torn shirt, to the point where the bright blue patch with "_SDC"_ written in white block letters upon his lapel was discolored and stained so badly as to appear almost black. Further down his uniform, the matching grey pants were filled with holes and cuts, making visible the bruises and gashes upon his skin. He kept his eyes on his bad leg, and focused on keeping his breathing slow and throat tight to keep in what meager food he had been offered as he once again saw the odd angle at which the limb rested against the rocky floor.

Suddenly, the scraping noise stopped.

Maybe he hadn't been subtle enough in the slow, careful motions of his eyes. Maybe she had been watching him with her usual crazed ferocity the entire time. Maybe he had just been unlucky, or maybe the opposite- maybe she had finally collapsed, dead from malnourishment. Somehow, he had a feeling that even in that final case, he wouldn't be given a reprieve. He had a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach from what he knew he would see when he looked up. With one slow, shuddering breath, he raised his eyes, and found exactly what he had come to fear over the past however many days.

A set of green eyes stared back, their pupils huge and unnatural in the dim light of the cave. Her face was almost pressed against his, to the point where he could barely see the gills that lined either side of her neck, distinguishing her as a faunus. Her fiery hair hung down to frame and stick to her face in loose, split strands. Dried blood was caked onto her lips and smeared on her cheeks, and the woman smelled vaguely of piss and stagnant water. He had no illusions that he smelled any better, but he found the pungent aroma nauseating all the same, and it only served to make the pair of wounds on his skull ache and throb all the more. She was sat atop his leg- his _bad_ leg, and staring at him, unblinking. Despite her position atop him, he couldn't feel her weight, and he knew that wasn't a good sign. It was also _new_.

"Awake again," the faunus woman observed as her face twisted into a manic smile. She was missing teeth, and the ones that remained were dirtied and twisted. Her voice came out in a harsh, accusatory croak that seemed almost to replace the absent scraping noise that echoed so frequently off the cave walls. "Maybe it's time to remove something else, then?"

The man closed his eyes for a brief moment as his bottom lip quivered. His breathing picked up as he ran his tongue along the cracked surface and tried to calm its frantic twitching. The stump where his ring finger had been still ached, despite however many hours it had been since her last "requisition", as she called them. He guessed that it had been at least half a day, or maybe more. How many days had they been down there? He wrinkled his brows and wracked his brain, only to find that he had no idea.

"_Look at me!_"

His eyes flew open as he felt her pull upon the steel collar around his neck. She jerked him forward until the chain attached to the device was pulled taught, and the pipe holding the other end creaked in protest. The man lurched forward and doubled over, but raised his head to meet the faunus' eyes. Somehow, they looked even madder than they had mere moments before. Her chest heaved wildly, her tattered rags sucking inward against her nearly skeletal chest as she bared her teeth.

"Nothing to say? Not putting up a fight anymore? I'm still going to take what you owe me."

"We're… both going to die down here," the man replied in a defeated tone. "No matter what we do, no one's coming. They don't care if two people go missing in a dust mine. It's _nothing_ to the corporation."

The woman paused for a moment, before pulling back and rising to stand. Her flesh was barely covered by the loose, brown loin cloth and ripped shirt that draped around her lithe and underfed frame. In her right hand was the source of the constant noise within the cave, her power over him, and much of his misery- a pair of wire cutters, the metal snips stained with dried blood.

"Maybe… but before we go, before _you_ go, I'm taking from you just as much as you've taken from me."

The man sighed heavily, and leaned forward once again. The pipe embedded in the cave wall behind him creaked and groaned in protest, and he looked off to his right. An opening large enough for a small mining vehicle extended off into the darkness, and somewhere within the space was a noise of running water. A plan began to formulate within his mind as he turned to look at her once again, only to see her picking at her teeth with the wire cutters.

"…you're insane. You've gone absolutely insane. We should be working together to try to get out of here, n-"

"Work together!?" the woman screeched, cutting him off as she once again closed the distance between them, pressing her nose against his. "_Work together?_ I would never work with _you_, and there's nothing to work together _on!_ There's no way out, no one's coming, and no one is going to mourn us. So I won't work _with_ you… I'll work _on_ you," she sneered as she clicked the wire cutters menacingly.

"_Stop!_" the man begged desperately as panic began to throb within his chest. "Please, just _stop!_ We're the same! You've lost your m-"

He never got to finish his sentence as a first careened into his teeth with surprising force, despite the frail and shaking arm behind it. His head rocked backward as he collapsed into the wall behind himself, and the pipes that served as his tether pole groaned and rattled once again.

"We are _not_ the same! We will _never_ be the same!" the woman roared as she slammed her foot into the man's gut. He let out a pained cry and string of spittle. "Schnee Dust Company _scum!_ Now who's the master? _Now_ who has to endure unfairness and torture? Even if this is where we both die, I'm going to enjoy seeing you go _first!_"

The man didn't resist as another swift kick impacted his stomach. He winced and grunted, before shaking his head. "Can't you remember? Can't you try to be rational? You used to be different. You used to be _beautiful_. Food is running out, and we'll be dead in a matter of days, or even _hours. _Whatever sick vengeance you think you're carrying out, I'm not the one… who…"

He trailed off as he watched her expression change to one of calm. Whatever life remained in her eyes seemed to drain all at once, and she raised the wire cutters as though they were a knife. Suddenly, she launched her arm forward and let out a feral scream as she made an attempt to thrust the joined points into his throat. With a last ditch effort and all of the adrenaline he could muster, he dodged to the side before slamming the woman's head into the rusted pipe behind himself. A sickening _crack_ resounded off the rocky walls, and he pulled as hard as he could only for a second, much louder creaking noise to ring out. The pipe snapped and bent forward just below one of the rusted joints, and he pulled himself up to a standing position before beginning to make his way for the dark tunnel as quickly as he could manage.

The man dragged his ruined leg behind himself as he limped along, bracing a hand upon the wall. His breathing came out in harsh, sick wheezes while he put as much distance as he could between himself and his attacker. The sound of running water grew louder, and the smell of mold began to grow stronger as the tunnel began to narrow and darken. Within a minute, his foot sank into a small puddle, and he looked down at the ground through squinted eyes. There on the floor, he could barely make out a shallow pool that seemed to stretch forward into near infinite darkness within a tunnel far too small for a human.

"No… no, no, _no_," the man repeated, his voice growing quieter with each word as he let himself fall forward. His hands splashed lightly within the dirty water as a raspy cackle rang out far behind him.

"_There's nothing over there to save you, Overseer_," the faunus woman's voice cooed. The man stole a quick glance over his shoulder, only to find her crawling toward him on all fours, her sunken chest and long, scraggly, frayed auburn mop of hair dragging along the floor. He quickly returned his eyes to the dark puddle below himself, and his warped, barely visible reflection. Even in the low light, he could see that his reflection looked terrified.

"_Just a dead end. A vain hope. Exactly what you funneled me into, all those years ago_," she continued, her voice growing louder as her proximity to him grew closer.

"I'm not who you think I am," the man pleaded. A second reflection appeared over his shoulder, and he closed his eyes once again. "Please, you're not in your right mind, I'm not wh-"

Vile, putrid water filled the man's open mouth and nostrils as she gripped the back of his head and forced him down into the water. He struggled with what little strength he had left for as long as he could, until quite suddenly, his hands slipped from around her wrist, and he stopped resisting. The woman loosened her grip ever so slightly, and his corpse slipped the final few inches down into the pooling muck, the fabric on the back of his ill-fitting shirt rising slightly as he remained still. She tilted her head slightly, before turning and beginning to walk silently back down the tunnel.

The lone shaft of light peeking through the rocks far above provided just enough light to help the woman find her discarded weapon. She knelt low and picked up the wire cutters in her bony fingers, before pausing as she noticed two discarded items upon the floor, just where the man had been sitting. There atop a large stain of dried fluids laid two severed feline ears, the cuts at their bases jagged, uneven, and long since drained of blood. For some reason, the pair looked familiar to her, though try as she might, she couldn't remember where they had come from, or who they had belonged to. Unconcerned, she rose to stand once again, and thrust the head of the wire cutters into the rocky wall. With her mind still swirling with foggy, half-remembered thoughts, she began to walk while dragging the tool along the wall once again.

A scraping noise echoed throughout the cave.


End file.
